Mirage

Cabrillo felt the blood drain from his face. There was nothing they could do. Nailing one of the Harpoons with the Gatling was what the system had been designed to do. There would be seven missiles inbound. If they were lucky, they could take out four of them. Damn lucky at that, but three would still make it through, penetrate deep into the ship, and explode with enough force to peel her hull apart like an overripe banana. They had mere minutes.

But still they drove on, water blowing through the Oregon’s drive tubes with unimaginable force, the prow cleaving the sea, shouldering aside two symmetrical curls of white water.

“Chairman, I don’t have a target,” Mark said.

“You will in just a minute.” Juan studied the display, noting the exact position Linda had seen Viper 7 disappear.

“You do realize we’re between the proverbial rock and hard place,” Max said.

“It’s going to get worse. I intend on hitting the rock.”

“We didn’t fare so well last time,” Hanley reminded him.

Cabrillo keyed on the shipwide intercom. “Crew, this is the Chairman. Prepare for impact.” He then looked over at his oldest friend. “Last time, we grazed the field. That’s its deadly power. At an angle, it will capsize a ship with no problem, but if we hit it head-on, we should slice right through it. Isn’t that right, guys?”

Mark and Eric exchanged a few words before Stone deferred to Murph to answer. “In theory, that’s a good idea, but we’re still going to feel the sheering effects. It won’t capsize us, but it could drive the bows so deep that the ship sinks, driven under as if pushed.”

“See,” Juan said with an optimistic uptick to his voice.

The sound of canvas ripping on an industrial scale reverberated throughout the Oregon as the Gatling engaged one of the incoming Harpoons. No one was paying the slightest attention. Everyone watched the forward camera. They were getting nearer and nearer the invisible field.

Juan double-checked their position, calculating angles and drift, wind, and a few other factors. “Helm, another point to starboard.”

The ship was just begi

Then the noise hit, a transonic thrum that drove deep into the skull. Juan slammed his palms over his ears, but it did little good. The sound was already in his head, it seemed, and it echoed off the bones, trying to scramble his brain. Above this came the high-pitch scream of tortured metal. It sounded as though the keel itself was bending. The angle grew steeper still. Max clung to the back of Juan’s seat to keep from being thrown to the deck. Loose articles began to roll toward the forward bulkhead. The lights flickered and a few of the computer screens went dead, their circuitry not sufficiently hardened against the magnetic waves and other forces that came and warped light around the stealth ship to make it invisible.

The main view screen exploded without warning because the metal wall behind it flexed past the glass’s tolerance. Mark and Eric were peppered with shards, but both had been bent over so the cuts were limited to a few on the nape of their necks.

The Oregon was pitched so far forward that her drive tubes came free from the ocean, and two great columns of water were shot into the air like massive fire hoses blasting with everything they had. Another couple of degrees more and the Oregon would be driven under with no hope of ever recovering. Juan had gambled and lost. His beloved ship was no match for the forces she had been asked to overcome. She’d given it everything she could, but it was just too much.

The motion was so sudden that Max almost hit the ceiling. The ship had bulled its way through the invisible edge of the dome of optomagnetic camouflage and popped back up onto an even keel with the frenetic energy of a bath toy. The sound that had so tortured them passed as though it had never struck. The Oregon lurched when the force of her motors was once again fighting the resistance of the seas.

Unbeknownst to the crew, the six remaining Harpoon missiles struck the barrier seconds later and all six experienced catastrophic failure due to electromagnetic pulse overload. They fell harmlessly into the ocean in her wake.

“Everyone okay?” Juan called out.

“What a ride!” Murph whooped.

When it was clear the op center crew was okay and Max was starting to evaluate the rest of their people, Cabrillo sca

“Wepps, you seeing what I’m seeing?”

“Yes, sir,” Murph said wolfishly. “Permission to fire?”

“Fire at will. And don’t stop until there’s nothing left to hit.”

The big 120 in the bow belched fire, and, a moment later, the solid shot hit dead center. Another followed even before the smoke cleared. A third a few seconds later. It was that round that hit some critical piece of equipment — something discovered by Tesla and tinkered with for over a century, something that teetered on the edge of physics — because when it was struck, what was left of the stealth ship vaporized in a dazzling corona of blue fire and blinding flashes of elemental electricity. It happened too fast for the mind to grasp, and, even later, when watched on tape played at its slowest possible speed, the very act of destruction was nearly instantaneous. All that remained behind were tiny bits of the composite hull and a slick of diesel fuel.

The overhead speakers played the voices of a very confused group of sailors and airmen who had just watched a ship nearly twice the length of a football field suddenly blink out of existence only to reappear a few seconds later, not to mention the six missiles they had fired vanishing too.

“Commander O’Co

“Please explain what just happened.”

“Think cloaking device. I told you there was a Chinese warship lurking out here. Give me an e-mail address and I’ll prove it.”

Mark took his cue and prepared a digital file of their one-sided gunfight with the stealth ship. The commander gave an address.

A few minutes later, O’Co

Juan’s cell rang. It was Overholt. “One second, please, Commander.” He took the call. “Lang, I’m going to need your help convincing an Admiral Giddings that he and his people never saw a thing and have never heard of the Oregon.”

“Did you get them?”

“Yes, but the cat’s out of the bag about our secret identity. We also have the specs on how the stealth system operates.” He could picture Overholt rubbing his hands together with delight. Those plans were going to buy a lot of clout in Washington.

“Whatever you need, my boy. Whatever you need.”

“You’re a pip.” He killed the call and addressed the commander once again. “In a little while, Admiral Giddings is going to radio you and tell you that this incident never occurred and that you have no knowledge of a ship called Oregon.”

“So the CIA has their own navy now?”

“If that is what you choose to believe, that’s fine with me. Besides, you have a war to avert, so I’d put us out of your mind and carry on with your job.”